Page 53 of Go Luck Yourself
Okay, better than baked beans, but—
“And here.” He adds a water bottle into my hands.
“All right,Mom.”
“I’m serious, Kris. I’ll na have you puking in my car.”
My brain stutters.
On him saying my name.
And a second time, oncar.“We’re driving to the race?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why not use magic to travel there? It’s inCork,isn’t it?”
“Mm.”
“That’s like a two-hour drive from here!”
“Hence the ungodly hour we’re up.” Finn accepts a travel mug of something steaming that Colm produces. He gives one to Siobhán as well, another to Loch; he has a last one that he tries to hand to me, but Loch snatches it.
“Ah-ah. Food and water first.”
One of my hands is outstretched for the coffee, the other holding the food and water bottle to my chest.
“You’re denying me caffeine,” I state, to be sure I’m understanding what will be put on the police report as my motive.
“Oh, I know how much you love your caffeine, Coffee Shop, butya need to eat.Water too.”
Inch by inch, I lift my glare to Loch’s face. “Give me. That coffee.”
“Eat. Your food.” He holds my coffee back far enough that I’d have to basically wrestle him to get it.
Siobhán and Finn watch us like they’re at a tennis match. Or the Hunger Games, in Finn’s case.
“Fuck you. Fuck youso much.” I rip open the granola bar and tear off a bite and chew, and gag, and keep chewing until I swallow. The bite miraculously stays down. I unscrew the water bottle and take a few gulps.
I hate that my stomach does feel a little better. “Have I earned my coffee?”
Loch relinquishes it to me, and I’m so desperate for it that I almost miss the way his voice serrates over the words “Good boy.”
My body jolts.
A spurt of coffee launches out of the mug’s mouthpiece and hits my wrist. The sting of pain from the hot liquid is about a thousand degrees cooler than the gush of napalm that chutes from the base of my skull to my tailbone.
I gape at Loch. “What did you—”
“You do na know how to fight a hangover?” He cuts in like he said nothing of importance, and maybe he didn’t; maybe I misheardboyo.But the scalding of my nerve endings doesn’t think I did. “And you call yourself a Cambridge lad.”
My throat is desert-dry.
I take a long drink of coffee. It doesn’t help.
“I—I know how to treat hangovers,” I stammer.
“Clearly. You seemed to be doing so well for yourself. Did na you ask me to get you a proper cure?”
